The opportunity of my boss....

While I was working with Ring & Auther for the NDT at the vehicle shafts, we heard someone was talking about the news of the Head of Engineering. All three of us was laying under the vehicle and kept silent. We didn't want to disturb the talking guys. From their conversation, they are technicians from Maintenance. They felt unhappy with their increasing workload because one of their Managers will be promoted to be Head of Engineering.

This is a big news to us, because all of us do not like that Manager. The most important thing is he is one of the most troublesome guys in our company. Ring said that we are going to have a very hard time. Auther said that we might need to be very careful with our daily work because he will attack us on our performance.

Suddenly, I think about my boss. What can he do if his major enemy getting promoted? They are originally at the same rank, but now things are totally different. If I were him, I will lose all my energy and passion.

Calibration for MT

Other than the Gaussmeter, our company also have many other methods/equipments to calibrate our MT machine. However, we seldom use them as they are not very useful. For example, the Pie Indicator, which is supposed to indicate the field direction, is almost no use because the direct of field is quite clear in a MT machine (either longitudinal or circular).

If I need to choose one method for calibration, expect the artificial flaws, I like Ketos ring most. It is used to evaluate and compare the overall performance and sensitivity of the MT machine. We use central conductor and pass current through the hole of the ring. If minimum number of holes can be shown, the test result is acceptable. But we can only use DC or full-wave rectified AC to do the test. Also, we need to demagnetize the ring before test because residual may left in the ring.

I love to conduct NDT, because it makes me a detective in finding flaws.

Promotion Opportunity & Gaussmeter

Last night, my boss asked me do we support him if he want to be the Head of Engineering. Oh god! There is no other choice to answer such question. What I can do is to tell him that I really think he is the one of most suitable candidates for the post. I think he was not satisfied with this answer and walked away with a laugh.

My boss is a young & smart guy. He always wants to climb up the management ladder. But I feel that our Director doesn't like him because sometimes he is too tough and intolerable. This may be the character of an inspection personnel who always believes that he is correct and everyone should respects his decision. Well, I don't think he can get the post but I think he will try. I talked with Big C this morning and both of us hope that we won't be involved in this promotion game.

Today, Bryan asked me how can we determine the field strength when doing MT. I told him the best way is to use a hall-effect probe gaussmeter because he can just directly read the data from the gaussmeter. An hour later, he came to me and said that our MT machine does not have enough strength. He then said he measured about 58G. But in ENISO9934-1, the strength should be 1T and, as T=10,000G, our MT machine is very weak. I was puzzled.

I went straight to the library and at last found out that in ENISO9934-1, 1T is the flux density and tangential field strength should be 2kA/m. Hall-effect probe gaussmeter is used to measure tangential field but not flux density.

Normally, when conducting MT, the tangential field strength should be about 30G to 60G which is 2.4kA/m to 4.8kA/m. If the magnetization is too high, spurious background indications may appear. Also when using a Gaussmeter, we must be very careful to do with a correct probe positioning. The probe must be perpendicular to the surface of the part at the location of measurement to within 5 deg.

I told Bryan all these but I don't think he understood what I was saying. He just said that he was ok with the result if the range is from 30 to 60. I really don't want to work with him. He should appreciate my effort and thank me for helping him.

Year 2007

I don't know that time can run that fast. A new year has come but I still cannot know what my CWI examination result is. Sometimes, I really wonder may be AWS won't inform the candidates who fail in the exam. My boss has been asking for our result almost every week. I don't know how my boss will treat me if I fail in this examination. Anyway, I will take it easy.

2007 seems not a good year to me because I am facing a lot of troubles in January. The first great news in this year is the Head of Engineering Department resigned last Friday. He is a nice guy but his subordinates (the gang of Engineers) are too lazy and unhelpful. The Head of Engineering will go back to US and work under another company of the same group. The Heads of all departments are quite excited, because they all want to have more resources to built up their team.

I really hate office politics. Being a low level member like me, I always suffer from such battles. Unfortunately, my boss is one of the most active warriors in the office battle field. I wish that everything will be better as time goes by.